The leaders of the intelligent design movement are once again holding court in America, defending themselves against charges that ID is not science. One of the expert witnesses is Michael Behe, author of the ID movements seminal volume Darwins Black Box. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, testified about the scientific character of ID in Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, the court case of eight families suing the school district and the school board in Dover, Pa., for mandating the teaching of intelligent design.

Under cross-examination, Behe made many interesting comparisons between ID and the big-bang theory  both concepts carry lots of ideological freight. When the big-bang theory was first proposed in the 1920s, many people made hostile objections to its apparent supernatural character. The moment of the big bang looked a lot like the Judeo-Christian creation story, and scientists from Quaker Sir Arthur Eddington to gung-ho atheist Fred Hoyle resisted accepting it.

In his testimony, Behe stated  correctly  that at the current moment, we have no explanation for the big bang. And, ultimately it may prove to be beyond scientific explanation, he said. The analogy is obvious: I put intelligent design in the same category, he argued.

This comparison is quite interesting. Both ID and the big-bang theory point beyond themselves to something that may very well lie outside of the natural sciences, as they are understood today. Certainly nobody has produced a simple model for the bigbang theory that fits comfortably within the natural sciences, and there are reasons to suppose we never will.

In the same way, ID points to something that lies beyond the natural sciences  an intelligent designer capable of orchestrating the appearance of complex structures that cannot have evolved from simpler ones. Does this claim not resemble those made by the proponents of the big bang? Behe asked.

However, this analogy breaks down when you look at the historical period between George Lemaitres first proposal of the big-bang theory in 1927 and the scientific communitys widespread acceptance of the theory in 1965, when scientists empirically confirmed one of the big bangs predictions.

If we continue with Behes analogy, we might expect that the decades before 1965 would have seen big-bang proponents scolding their critics for ideological blindness, of having narrow, limited and inadequate concepts of science. Popular books would have appeared announcing the big-bang theory as a new paradigm, and efforts would have been made to get it into high school astronomy textbooks.

However, none of these things happened. In the decades before the big-bang theory achieved its widespread acceptance in the scientific community its proponents were not campaigning for public acceptance of the theory. They were developing the scientific foundations of theory, and many of them were quite tentative about their endorsements of the theory, awaiting confirmation.

Physicist George Gamow worked out a remarkable empirical prediction for the theory: If the big bang is true, he calculated, the universe should be bathed in a certain type of radiation, which might possibly be detectable. Another physicist, Robert Dicke, started working on a detector at Princeton University to measure this radiation. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson ended up discovering the radiation by accident at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., in 1965, after which just about everyone accepted the big bang as the correct theory.

Unfortunately, the proponents of ID arent operating this way. Instead of doing science, they are writing popular books and op-eds. As a result, ID remains theoretically in the same scientific place it was when Phillip Johnson wrote Darwin on Trial  little more than a roster of evolutionary theorys weakest links.

When Behe was asked to explicate the science of ID, he simply listed a number of things that were complex and not adequately explained by evolution. These structures, he said, were intelligently designed. Then, under cross-examination, he said that the explanation for these structures was intelligent activity. He added that ID explains things that appear to be intelligently designed as having resulted from intelligent activity.

Behe denied that this reasoning was tautological and compared the discernment of intelligently designed structures to observing the Sphinx in Egypt and concluding that it could not have been produced by non-intelligent causes. This is a winsome analogy with a lot of intuitive resonance, but it is hardly comparable to Gamows carefully derived prediction that the big bang would have bathed the universe in microwave radiation with a temperature signature of 3 degrees Kelvin.

After more than a decade of listening to ID proponents claim that ID is good science, dont we deserve better than this?

Your puerile attempts to suppress other points of view are useless. People are free to investigate and inquire based on their own beliefs. What a sad and demented life you must lead. Each waking moment spent attempting to stifle others so that your own twisted logic is the only one allowed.

3
posted on 12/05/2005 4:12:58 AM PST
by Doc Savage
("Guys, I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more COWBELL...Bruce Dickinson)

If that article isn't enough to start the week, check out these developments in the Dover litigation. Each side is submitting "proposed findings" for the court to work on, which is why this thing is taking so long:

I cannot say that S&T News is any kind of friend for ID, nor that it ever would have been. I tried it out and found it resolutely opposed to the very notion of Theology having any dependability for any question whatsoever. The magazine appears designed to destroy whatever credibility theology might have ever had. It should really be named Science trumps Theology News.

Thanks for posting this, though. Always good to know that the mainstreamers occupy every height in culture now as ever and are just as blind and self-centered now as ever.

Or are you agreeing that Fred Hoyle looks like anything but a fool for having so readily discounted the Big Bang?

Oh how your ideaology has blinded you. No one is attempting to suppress anything. All researchers are asking is that ID proponents actually do some science to support their positions. So far, there hasn't been one piece of research done with the aim of finding evidence for design. Partly I believe this can be chalked up to the ID proponents not having clue one on how to test for design. Their whole thesis revolves around, "this looks like it was designed, so therefore it must have been -- and besides, Darwin sucks."

8
posted on 12/05/2005 4:22:26 AM PST
by Junior
(From now on, I'll stick to science, and leave the hunting alien mutants to the experts!)

The smallest living organism requires a minimum of 239 individual protein molecules. Protein molecules are made from amino acids. Amino acids are made of carbon, hydrogen nitrogen and oxygen. Amino acids joined together in a long twisted string form a protein molecule. Each protein molecule requires a minimum of 410 amino acids. All formed in left handed spirals. (Protein molecules do not have right handed spirals for some unknown reason.) The chances of at least 410 amino acids accidentally forming a chain to produce one protein molecule is 10123. The odds against this happening in at least 239 protein molecules to form the smallest living organism are 1029345. The odds of that one organism surviving long enough to learn to eat, breathe and reproduce are beyond calculation. You have better odds of having an explosion in a sand pile and getting a fully operating computer with a copy of XP with no bugs! Good luck

9
posted on 12/05/2005 4:22:53 AM PST
by liliesgrandpa
(The Republican Party simply can't do anything without that critical 100-seat Senate majority.)

Or are you agreeing that Fred Hoyle looks like anything but a fool for having so readily discounted the Big Bang?

Hoyle was wrong about his "steady state" theory, although at the time he was its champion, it fit the then-available data. He was also wrong when he wandered from his specialty and started babbling about tornadoes in junkyards.

"They will remain a cult with devoted followers, but with little respect."

Ya mean sorta like the general public views evols?

I ain't got no dog in this hunt but it impresses me that evols are not only defensive about a position that they claim has no foundation and are often downright abusive about it. That ain't no way to win a battle considering that the majority of American's think evolution is full of holes.

Might I suggest that another approach is to calmly and without invective explain the position rather than use words like "cult", "ignorant", "bible thumpers", "knuckle draggers", "cousin marrying", et al. All of which I have seen used to describe those that question any aspect of the ToE.

Just a thought of course. If evols want to continue to insult those they wish to convince by all means, that is certainly the way to go.

But then that's the way the ACLU usually operates so I guess it's just business as usual.

13
posted on 12/05/2005 4:32:46 AM PST
by Proud_texan
("Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." - Barry Goldwater)

I haven't used Science & Theology News as a source before, so I looked up their About Us link. It starts thusly:

Science & Theology News is the monthly, international newspaper reporting the latest research findings, funding opportunities and discussions on the relationship among religion, science and health ... .

Over the past four years, Science & Theology News has become the definitive source for information about science-and-religion. Our 30,000 national and international readers go to Science & Theology News to learn about research, funding and education in the field. A generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation supports the newspaper, allowing us to offer a subsidized subscription price.

All true, which means "chance" can't be the explanation; on that, all sides are agreed.

Of course, the odds against Avogadro's number of sodium chloride molecules "just happening" to arrange itself into a cubic crystal are also so astronomically huge as to make the event a practical impossibility.

The conclusion we draw there is that some sort of physical law is at work -- a conclusion that would be justified even if we couldn't yet state the law precisely, as long as there was no compelling reason to the contrary.

What we need from the ID crowd, and haven't seen (and in my opinion aren't going to see), is just such a compelling reason to the contrary.

That ain't no way to win a battle considering that the majority of American's think evolution is full of holes.

Exactly one-half of the population of America has an IQ of 100 or less. And, even if the majority believe in space aliens and ghosts...should we let those who are uneducated and unqualified dictate the course of science?

Maybe my naivete is extreme, but it seems to me that science would have nothing to research if there was no reason in creation. Isn't that what scientists DO... try to find out how things work? If they kept discovering chaos, they would stop. Those of us who believe in divine creation are all the more awed when science uncovers yet another layer of amazing interrelationships in the universe. (The Golden Mean is a prime example). I remain awed, and firmly believe that ultimate discovery will come when we "see Him face to face". In the meanwhile, no approach to science is wrong, or sacreligeous - they all serve to humble us even more.

Maybe my naivete is extreme, but it seems to me that science would have nothing to research if there was no reason in creation. Isn't that what scientists DO... try to find out how things work? If they kept discovering chaos, they would stop.

Sure, scientists look for patterns and principles that describe the underlying order in what may look superficially like chaos. And many people (the famous Deist from whom I took my screen name, for example) have regarded the existence of such order generally as evidence of a "cosmic architect" or "designer."

But that's not what the ID folks argue. They claim to be able to tell apart two different kinds of order: one that can be explained in terms of the operation of natural law, and one that can't. It's only the latter that they attribute to the operation of intelligence.

As a matter of science, their "argument" founders on the fact that they haven't got any reliable way to tell the two apart or any real program for investigating the matter scientifically.

I never thought of it that way....but ID'ers are the Democrats of Science. No plan, No ideas....just "we hate Darwin" and "It's Darwin's Fault". And, if you don't agree with them....you get called names such as "purile" and be called a "truth nazi".

"The chances of at least 410 amino acids accidentally forming a chain to produce one protein molecule is 10123. The odds against this happening in at least 239 protein molecules to form the smallest living organism are 1029345. The odds of that one organism surviving long enough to learn to eat, breathe and reproduce are beyond calculation."

I don't know from where you get your probability calculations, but assuming they are correct, if these processes occured millions and millions of times, one would get 410 amino acids forming a protein molecule fairly quickly and easily. Same with forming the smallest organism.

And if these things occured on a second or so worldwide, in the 6 BILLION years they earth has been around that means that this could have occurred 6,000,000 x 365 x 24 x 60 x 60 = 1,892,160,000,000,000 times so far (at a minimum)...so those "1 in a billion" odds don't look so bad when you do something 1 quadrillion times....

I cannot say that S&T News is any kind of friend for ID, nor that it ever would have been. I tried it out and found it resolutely opposed to the very notion of Theology having any dependability for any question whatsoever. The magazine appears designed to destroy whatever credibility theology might have ever had. It should really be named Science trumps Theology News.

You are missing the point completely.

Science is the study of what happens when God does not intervene. Theology is the study of what happens when God does intervene.

Inteligent Design might be true, but it can never be Science. It is by definition Theology. Therefore is shold never be taught in Science Classes.

If people want to be honest and add Theology classes to public schools, that would be OK with me, but don't debase science.

The problem is that scientists aren't typically the types that go into public relations and the media types who report on science seek controversy over accuracy. I've had some of my research reported on by the NY Daily News and Newsday...I didn't recognize my own work (I had been doing for two years.)

I opt for more and better Sci-Fi movies as a substitute for the MSM. (with tongue in cheek).

Infinite combinations of matter over an indefinite period of time can explain everything that exists. Shall we call this "science?"

Believe it or not, there are scientific theories based on essentially that idea. Provided an infinite universe, there will be a region of space with the exact same arrangements of matter and energy as we have here. There is a statistical probability for this. A very low probability, but a finite one. But given an infinite universe, that makes that low probability a certainty. That means there are multiple Fester Chugabrew's and doc30's out there.

40
posted on 12/05/2005 5:37:49 AM PST
by doc30
(Democrats are to morals what and Etch-A-Sketch is to Art.)

"Infinite combinations of matter over an indefinite period of time can explain everything that exists. Shall we call this "science?"

Basicly yes, but some clarification is needed here. There are not an infinite number of combinations as the structure of the amino acids will only allow so many combinations. Have this finite number of combinations attempt to happen milions and millions and millions all of times all over the earth where the primordal soup existed and bingo, you start having protein molecules. That's called science.

And, the process very obviously is not happening for an "infinite" amount of time because the primordal soup from which we came ceased to exist in that form millions of years ago.

Where did you get in my post that this suggests an explanation for "everything that exists"? That is not science.

You can't compute odds without a model of the event. You evidently think complex structures jump together all at once from amino acids. At any rate, that's what you modeled. There's very little evidence for this ever happening.

The closest analogy I can find to your model is the Genesis creation story. A man is formed from dust in one afternoon. Yes, it's pretty ridiculous. I doubt even God would do it that way.

42
posted on 12/05/2005 5:41:46 AM PST
by VadeRetro
(Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)

Speaking as a believer, I think science would be aided in it's advancement by not ignoring the 100% accuracy of the Bible regarding physics.

God states in the Bible that we humans should know he is God because he tells us the ending from the begining. There is recorded in it's pages details of future physical events that will greatly impact not only the earth but the universe.

For instance the sun will grow hotter and scorch the earth and it is the sun's power, not man that will cause global warming on a scale that blisters men with sores.

It also relates the rising seas, roaring tides, the sudden stillness of the sea, it's turning red and watery as a dead man's blood, now the evidence is in, we have the "red tides". We are told that this red tide will kill every living thing in the sea. This red tide has already appeared from Galveston to Italy devastating the fishing industry with each appearance.

We are told that the stars will appear to fall, that the earth will rock to and fro on it's axis like a drunkard.

All these things are coming, it's rediculous for science to disregard the Bible out of hand. Especially given the universe is speeding up rather than slowing down as predicted, the red tides are here, the melting of polar ice, and the contested global warming, the conditions that are causing fish kills on a massive scale are here.

The speed up of the universe could be explained because of the black hole discovered at the center of the Milky Way, or some other reason yet to be discovered. We count on science to ponder the causes of these future events, identify them, and use the same physics used to discover the Big Bang, to verify where we are along our clearly marked path using the Bible as it's template.

I don't think that it's alot to ask of science to stop being one step behind the Bible, blindly following along after the fact instead of in sinc.

How do they explain "natural law" in the first place? Where do they say it comes from?

Probably many (most? all?) ID proponents are of the personal opinion that an intelligent creator is responsible for all of natural law as well. But that's not part of the official theory of intelligent design, because ID itself doesn't seek to explain the origins of things that can be accounted for by natural law.

I'm convinced that Behe and thus ID are nothing but a book selling charlatan hoax. What baffles me are the people who fall hook, line, and sinker for this hoax. On one hand it's understandable that a person who's never studied science could easily be deceived by charlatans (after all they're selling their pseudo science books to someone). But, on the other hand it would seem that people who fall for a charlatan hoax and are interested in understanding evolution would sooner or later get around to reading a real science book. The evidence I see from these threads is that the trolls who keep invading seem to relish digging themselves deeper into the pit of ignorance when it would be so much simpler and more personally rewarding to just read the science books that debunk the pseudoscience. What is it about pig-ignorance that causes otherwise rational people to wallow in it? Common sense tells you that a any new heavily marketed best selling book that starts off telling you that all the other scientists and experts on the planet are wrong is feeding you a line of stinky BS.

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